Front End

Joomla's Front-End you can have many different setups to it. What's in the sample data is not always the defacto way of setting up your site.
The reason I showed you the ACL before showing you the common user interface or UI for Joomla is that Joomla is very flexible.

In the access levels section I spoke about the Front-End of Joomla and how its effected by access levels.
Now a fast recap Access levels have three groups Public, Registered and Special
each access level group can do some type of action or view a resource on your site.
Access levels are set via the menu,articles modules etc.

In the case of Joomla's Front-end a user is either a guest AKA Public or Registered and above user. 
Which would give the user more access to do and see things on the site.
Basically a menu module links or points the user to a component that serves a function i.e adding a  article or login etc.
Module menus are used with access levels to show or hide links to a user depending on their access level.

An example of a the login module is shown in the image below.
This image cutout has a login form fields and some links under it to take a user to a login or reset there password
or to register a new account with the site.

This cutout is the registration component  that everyone sees when signing up.



Now if we where to have an account already registered with Joomla and we Logged in to the Joomla site we would see this
User module menu if you installed the sample data.



Now via the Back-End system with the default data installed your should have a menu called User Menu.
In the cutout below you can see the arrow pointing to the Access Level of each link.



Once you have logged into the site you see that registered with normal accounts will only see two links the Your Details and
Logout links. Now if you have a higher account type say Author account you would see all the links like the Submit an Article & the
Submit a web link because there assign to the special group.


The image cutout below shows the Module Manager and the User Menu is highlighted to show you the module itself has a
Access Level now remember that all menus are shown thru a module.
So the Module is the first layer of Access Level then the Menu link itself then in other cases the content can also have an access level setting.



Basically looking at it from the four roles that are given to the front users which are registered, author, editor and publisher.
Now there are no fast or hard rules about your Joomla setup and some the roles.


These at can be changed with Access levels to let lower accounts like just registered users submit articles etc.
This does not mean that will be able to self publish without a review by a Publisher account.


By default in the sample data installed.
The only three roles that let a user submit an article are  author, editor and publisher.
So not to confuse you any more lets stick with for now with that pattern of that sample install data.

The main work horse for Joomla is the article system and in the Front-End this what the Editor looks like.
If you have chosen the default editor.

All three default Front-End author, editor and publisher will see this editor.



This is not a lesson on how to used the editor but more of a visual overview the most key parts of the Front-End.

Registered
A Registered member is a person that used the register form to start an account with your Joomla site.
they can now view pages that have a registered access level set on them. By default with the sample data
registered members can post articles.

Now author, editor and publisher have access to the editor.
But the editors forms below it are a little different based on there roles.

Author
A Author  member is a person the can by default submit articles and other items to your site.
Authors can only edit there own articles.


Editor
A Editor member can submit and edit all articles even if they did not create them.



Publisher
A Publisher member can do everything an editor can do but they have the power to make an article live.


This covers a bit of the main front end editor and access levels and how they play into the front end of Joomla.
Next I will cover the Back-End to get you use to some common concepts and interfaces etc.